The Global Game points us to this trailer for a documentary that’s currently making the festival circuit called “Estrellas de la Línea,” about a group of prostitutes from Guatemala who have banded together to create a football (or soccer as David Beckham now says) team called Las Estrellas. The point? To raise publicity for their cause:

Las Estrellas desire to be seen in a new light, as women and mothers first, and to expose the structural inequities that make prostitution almost an inevitability for uneducated, often illiterate women lacking alternatives.

It seems prostitution has been legal in Guatemala, and largely unchanged, since the late 19th century. So, Las Estrellas also hope to shed light on the need for better regulation. But it’s their provocative style that has us so enamored. Like how they planned their first ever match to raise the virgin-whore ire of the entire country.

Las Estrellas’ first match in Sept ’04 came against the girls’ team from Colegio Americano, the elite American School of Guatemala, and almost immediately publicity flowed. Much of the debate afterward was framed by this one match.

That’s the kind of PR moxie that would make Daniel Mauser climax. Perhaps we can coordinate some sort of synergystic tailgate in the near future.

Souls on ‘The Line’ | Guatemala City sex workers turn to fútbol for a sense of who they are [The Global Game]